


You Guys Used To Play Here All The Time

by ViolenceNewsNetwork



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Baltimore Crabs (Blaseball Team), Gen, Hades Tigers (Blaseball Team), Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolenceNewsNetwork/pseuds/ViolenceNewsNetwork
Summary: Two blaseball players walk into a bar.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	You Guys Used To Play Here All The Time

12:30 PM, Tuesday, and MegaSiesta 2 has quieted Hades like a snowfall. Lost souls drift about downtown Tartarus, bewailing their unfinished business over brunch and mimosas. Without the regular crack of the bat echoing from the stadium, the city’s lost its rhythm. The Underworld is just sort of… here. Sedate.

Spears, in a post-season party haze, has disappeared, and the reps from the Fridays would very much like to find him before their chillbus leaves at, “y’know. Whenever.” Which is how Randy Castillo, a one-beer-on-Sundays-watching-flootball man nearing middle age, ends up in the Phlegethon Lounge in the middle of the afternoon.

He squints into the hazy dive. The Phlegethon Lounge (‘Hot Times, Cold Drinks!’) is the kind of place where there is exactly one window, and it’s completely occupied by a neon sign for Mlike’s Hard Demonade. Randy blinks a few times, adjusting. A few imps, a ghost trying vainly to pick up a bottle, and… no Spears. Dammit. This is the fifth place Randy’s been into.

He’s about to leave when he notices half the bar is taken up by a single beefy arm.

“Tosser? The hell you doing here? Rest of your team left three hours ago.”

Adalberto Tosser shrugs (an act which his anatomy makes  _ fascinating _ to watch) and doesn’t take his eyes off his drink. “Missed the boat.” He takes a swig. “Well, I didn’t  _ miss _ the boat, I just-“

“-Forgot that the River Styx winds around the underworld seven times, so you need five boat tickets and two bridge passes, or else you gotta take the cruise all the way up it?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, that’s why I fly.”

Tosser doesn’t respond, and Randy doesn’t really know what to say, so the room just goes quiet again. The ghost is now trying its absolute best to play plool.

Randy pats his thigh absently. “Next boat doesn’t leave ’til 2. You mind if I join you?” he asks genially.

Tosser shoots him a sideways glance. “Yeah, I guess.”

Randy doesn’t know Tosser terribly well, but he’s seen the guy before. Friendly dude, usually. Likes to make a little bit of a scene. Definitely more talkative than he is right now. He orders a diet coke and taps his fingers idly on the bartop. “Some series, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Wild one, there. You guys played some quality blaseball.”

“Yeah, same.”

Adalberto takes another sip of his drink. Randy reads the ad on the coaster.

“Yup, some gooood blaseball.”

Tosser finally meets Randy’s eyes. “Where you goin’ with this, Ran’?”

“What?”

“I’m not bored. I got a gamebloy. And I’m pretty sure you have a thing you need to go do. Do you need something?” Tosser’s tone is pointed, and Randy is suddenly aware just how big a 7-foot arm is.

“No!” Randy blurts. “No. Well, yeah. Kind of.” He thumps his wrist on the counter a few times, trying to get his thoughts together. “It was a… it was a weird series. Weird energy. That’s all.”

Adalberto raises his eyebrows. “Uh huh.”

Randy shifts in his seat. “You guys used to play here all the time in the old L-E days. It feels different this time.”

“We’re better, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, it’s just-“

“You know, I’m… I’m tired of it.” Tosser raises his voice, but a little twitch in his lip reveals this is not a man used to being so confrontational, but he’s damn trying to get something out, though. “Every time we come cross-league somebody  _ wants _ something from us. No one cared how we were back when we weren’t, y’know, that good. But now we’re in the news and… And all that.” He screws up his face and slaps a dinner-plate-hand on the counter. “We got our act together, we play clean for seasons and  _ still _ we can’t get a break from it.”

“Woah, woah, Tosser! Hey, I’m just trying to-“

“What, play the nice guy and let me come off like an asshole?”

“No, Jesus.”

“Then what?”

Randy’s back is up now. It’s not a place he usually lives, but there’s anger creeping into his voice. “You know what? Yeah. I do have opinions. Ever since the leagues switched up and you guys started flattening everyone, there’s been some out of line stuff. People throwing bottles. 200 pound crabs climbing light poles. Our locker room got tagged with, ‘Claws up!’ before game three.”

Tosser turns, knuckles leaving dents in the linoleum. “When’s the last non-championship game you played in the Crabitat?”

“The hell does it matter?”

Tosser rests his forehead on his normal-sized arm. “It’s nice, Randy. It’s chill. People bring their kids. We keep the stadium running _perfect_. Sometimes a few crustaceans act up, but Mama Crab doesn’t play that way. Kicks ‘em out.”

A beat as Randy processes. “And then they go out into the world.”

“Foam claws and jerseys on, where we can’t do a thing about them.”

“And neither can we.”

A long moment passes. The ghost has gotten trapped in the corner pocket.

Randy sips his soda, which in here makes him feel kind of like Mr. Goody Two-Shoes. “That’s… huh. That’s a pickle.”

Adalberto suppresses a chuckle. “Did you actually call something a pickle?”

“I cut down on the swearing for the kids and it just stuck.” He smirks. “I talk like a grandma from Appalachia now.”

Adalberto chuckles.

Randy lets out a sigh. “I’m don’t… I not gonna pretend like you’re out there telling fans to get blasted and rip the chairs out of the stadium, but you can see why there might be some hard feelings.”

“Yeah,” Adalberto says, eying his shoes. “I mean we’re trying to keep our own act on the up and up, godkilling not included.”

“Every team in the ILB’s trying to kill the gods these days, though.”

“It’s just kinda exhausting. Being out in the world. Right?”

Both men toy idly with their glasses. The ILB has changed a lot since season one. Even relatively unknown players find themselves dealing with the pressures of being a public figure. 

A clearly-possessed 9-ball floats out the front door. The bartender chases after it, swearing.

Randy speaks. “You know, between the two of us and the Pies, I’m ten to one we’re gonna see an ascension next season.”

“Definitely.”

“You guys are in the two-ring club now.” Randy fixes the bar with a stony stare, and Tosser recognizes the quiet, ever-dutiful Castillo that steps up to the plate each game. Probably why the Tigers put him in the last spot on the lineup. “You know what? Scares the hell out of me.”

“Ascension?”

“Yeah,” Randy says, tonelessly. “I mean, who knows what happens, right? I have people I can’t be leaving behind.”

Tosser frowns. “I feel that. I mean there’s some stuff in this game that terrifies me. But I think I wanna know more than I don’t.”

“Hmm.”

It’s quiet again in the Phlegethon lounge. Outside, the flaming river crackles and snaps, spitting gobs of glowing magma. The effect is strangely comforting.

“Hey,” says Randy, “I gotta get moving. Still zero idea where this kid went.”

Tosser chuckles. “Think I saw a pitchfork on South and Chaos Pit.”

“Thanks.” Randy tosses on his coat. “Good, uh, talking with you.”

He’s halfway out the door when the response stops him. “I’m probably gonna be down here again sometime, assuming one of us isn’t, you know, incinerated, traded, or rocketed outside time and space. You wanna do this again next time?”

Randy turns, and Tosser is offering him his hand.

He very gingerly takes one finger and shakes. “Yeah,” he says, smiling, “next time.”


End file.
